BBQ Chips

It is one o´clock in the morning and the night is mild, even though it rained the entire day. With my legs stretched wide before me, I am sitting on the stairs of the 7/11 supermarket and have a bag of extra spicy BBQ chips. They taste so unhealthy, so damn salty and are full of flavour enhancers, glutamate and other chemical stuff – but I enjoy it. Even if it is an early Monday morning, there are still a lot people around and besides the chips I was able to get some fried rice with pork and sweet, Chinese dumplings.

The noisy sound of hundreds of cars on the highway has gone and has been replaced by the concert of a thousand-frog-choir and a million-cricket-orchestra playing the background music. I smile – I may pass this 7/11 every day and could sit here whenever I want to, but this moment feels special. It is one of these moments when I realize that I made it to Thailand to live my dream; and not just for a few weeks. It is when I realize that the life I live here is the best I can imagine: Full of opportunities, without any duties and as much training sessions as I want to.

It is one of these moments you will remember for a long time. It is just this picture of me sitting there with a friend, watching the people, enjoying my massively unhealthy cheat-meal and being absolutely content and happy. And for sure, I will not have a bad conscience for committing that BBQ-sin. Because I earned it.

Today I won another Muay Thai fight and got a lot of experience out of it. My corner told me, or let´s say they basically forbid me, to rely on my boxing. I had to concentrate on my Muay Thai skills, trying to clinch and knee a lot instead of taking advantage of the lacking boxing skills of many Thai fighters. Back in Germany I fought under K-1 rules (which do not allow clinching and elbows) and MMA, but the clinch in MMA is completely different to the one in Thaiboxing.

Well taped hands - ´If you did this in the US, you´d go to jail, man!´

So my corner told me not to do what I feel confident in but to concentrate on the part of the game I have hardly experienced yet and I would say I am not that good at. Furthermore, my opponent was a Thai, so he knows how clinching works – fighting the shark in the ocean. This made me worried a bit when climbing over the ropes but I accepted the challenge.

The opponent was tougher than the last one but I followed the instructions of my corner (´Don´t let him kick you! Kick first!´) and, instead of avoiding the clinch as usual, getting into it. I was far from controlling him easily, getting dominant positions or breaking his balance, but I was able to shot many knees to the ribs. Even if they were not the hardest ones... many lighter ones start to hurt after a while too.

But what I am really proud of is that I landed a couple of elbows – before I came to Team Quest I barely trained them because they are forbidden in the most German MMA events. I hit him with short right elbows in the clinch to the forehead and finally made him go down with a bigger one to the temple in the third round.

I am glad that my corner gave me the advice to go without my boxing and play the game of traditional Muay Thai. Three rounds of good clinching experience are worth a lot because I think I will soon face opponents that will not be impressed by my boxing and force me to clinch with them... might be better to have some skills then...

I am not really hurt, so I will look forward to fight again soon!